Highly oversubscribed funding round will power ZEDEDA’s next phase of
growth in sales, marketing, R&D and infrastructure

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/CleanEnergy?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#CleanEnergylt;/agt;–ZEDEDA,
the leader in edge virtualization software, today announced it has
secured $16M in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The round was
co-led by Energize Ventures and Lux Capital, each of whom invests
heavily in companies fundamentally advancing how society implements and
utilizes advances in technology. The funds will go toward scaling
ZEDEDA’s infrastructure, increasing R&D, and expanding sales, marketing,
and customer success programs to provide greater support to its growing,
global customer base.

Existing investors participating in the round included Wild West
Capital, Almaz Capital, Barton Capital, and industry veteran Ed Zander,
former CEO of Motorola and former COO of Sun Microsystems.

As part of the funding, Kevin DeNuccio, Founding Partner at Wild West
Capital, Juan Muldoon, Principal at Energize Ventures and Bilal Zuberi,
Partner at Lux Capital will be joining ZEDEDA’s board of directors.

Building Edge Virtualization for Connected Operations

Connected assets operating at the enterprise edge are forecasted to
approach 20
billion over the next year and the vast majority of the massive amounts
of data they generate will have to be processed at the
cyber-physical edge. Organizations need a software-defined, hardware-
and cloud-agnostic solution for processing that data. Since that
processing will happen outside secure datacenters, the solution must be
capable of scaling advanced applications like AI across large numbers of
devices operating in industrial settings or remote locations while
rebuilding security from the ground up in a zero-trust model.

ZEDEDA makes it possible to securely deploy any application, on any
hardware, over any network, at the edge, that can operate autonomously –
independent of the connectivity to the cloud or corporate data center.
ZEDEDA’s open standards-based edge virtualization software gives
organizations complete control of their edge data and avoids vendor
lock-in regardless of the apps and clouds they choose to implement.

“Building, deploying, and running apps at the edge should be just as
easy and secure as it is for the cloud today. This funding supports our
vision of creating a cloud-native edge that is open-source,
ultra-secure, and standards-based,” said ZEDEDA CEO Said Ouissal.
“Removing the complexity of edge infrastructure in a way that is secure
and vendor agnostic enables far greater control over corporate data.
That, in turn, boosts business agility and innovation through the use of
distributed and local AI and IoT applications acting on the massive
amounts of edge data generated per second.”

ZEDEDA Series A Funding Fueling Momentum

ZEDEDA has partnered with a powerful group of seasoned investors with a
track record of investing in iconic companies that play a central role
in disrupting the status quo, revitalizing older industries, and
speeding existing industries toward technology-driven efficiencies not
previously thought possible.

“We have been very pleased to see the continued accelerated adoption of
our technology by several enterprises, particularly within the energy
and industrial organizations, and that consequently drove strong
interest from many investors to participate in our oversubscribed Series
A,” said Ouissal. “Energize Ventures and Lux Capital are exceptional and
complementary investors, strongly aligned with our company vision,
ambitions, values and principles, and I am excited to partner with them
as we continue to build our leadership position in edge virtualization.”

Energize Ventures invests in companies that provide digital solutions
that drive affordability, reliability, and security for energy and
industry. “We’re thrilled to help build this foundational platform with
ZEDEDA and enable more integrated, holistic, and scalable industrial IoT
deployments” says Juan Muldoon, Principal at Energize Ventures,
“Advances in data analytics and digital operations will continue to push
processes closer to the sources of data across manufacturing, energy,
industry, and retail. Today, there is a missing ‘connective tissue’ to
facilitate deployment at scale and close the loop between IT and OT.”

IoT-related spending is estimated to surpass
$1 trillion by 2020 with IIoT investment accelerating at a similar
pace. By contrast, the projected market cap for cloud computing is
expected to grow
to $500 billion by 2020. However, the apps enabled by IIoT data are
ultimately what impacts business and a standard way to secure, deploy,
and manage those apps at the edge is expected to be the key to
accelerating adoption and unlocking the value of these IIoT investments.

“At Lux, we partner with technology companies that are shaping the
future, from autonomous vehicles and advanced manufacturing to retail
innovations, energy infrastructure, and smart cities. To enable smart
applications such as IoT data analytics, machine learning, AI, and
hybrid/multi-cloud deployments, an open and unified edge computing
architecture is required,” said Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital.
“ZEDEDA is an early leader in making this fundamental shift to
hyper-connected, cloud-native infrastructure at the edge a reality.”

“Almaz Capital continues to be thrilled with the rapid progress ZEDEDA
has made in advancing the future of edge computing,” said Geoffrey
Baehr, Almaz Capital General Partner. “We see a tremendous opportunity
in bringing modern security and upgradeability to the systems that run
the critical infrastructure of the industrial world. The team has had a
vision of an open, cloud-native edge from day 1 and their progress with
customers as well as open source powerhouse Linux Foundation has made
the decision to help accelerate their growth extremely easy.”

“ZEDEDA’s team was assembled with a diverse and unique experience set
that has understood the challenges of distributed systems acting on edge
data since our inception,” said Kevin DeNuccio, Founder of Wild West
Capital and an early backer of ZEDEDA. “Their vision has delivered a
cloud-native edge that deals with the massive scale, security, and
diversity challenges for both new or legacy edge applications. Allowing
organizations the freedom to choose and focus on how to take advantage
of massive amounts of their edge data for AI and Machine Learning that
provides the business agility, simplicity, and security of a cloud
application will change how businesses create competitive advantage and
ultimately how humans experience the world around us.”

About Energize Ventures

Energize Ventures is a pre-growth stage, female-led, venture fund
located in Chicago. We partner with companies that create digital
solutions that drive affordability, reliability and security for energy
and other industries. Energize Ventures invests across cybersecurity,
mobility, data analytics, operational efficiency, and distributed
energy. For more information on Energize Ventures, please visit www.energize.vc.

About Lux Capital

Lux Capital is a venture firm based in New York City and Silicon Valley
investing in counter-conventional, seed and early stage science and
technology ventures. Lux manages $1.4 billion in assets across multiple
funds. For more information please visit www.luxcapital.com
or follow us on Twitter @Lux_Capital.

About ZEDEDA

ZEDEDA is pioneering a cloud-native approach to control, visibility, and
security of edge applications at hyperscale with the industry’s first
edge virtualization software. Founded in 2016, ZEDEDA is headquartered
in Santa Clara, CA with additional engineering and customer success
teams based in India. For more information, please visit www.zededa.com
or follow us on Twitter at @ZEDEDAEdge.